Thursday, March 05, 2009

Run for Mayor? Rep? Why Not!

The flashing teeth and sincere stares just keep coming. Who wants to be mayor? Who wants to be state rep? More than we had imagined and there's still time to file.

The open 3rd Suffolk House seat has a lot drooling and fantasizing. For Boston mayor, at least three figure voters are ready for a new king.

We can keep an eye open for other can't-help-myself candidates, at least for the rep slot. Candidates have until April 7th to file and only need 150 certified voter signatures. Hell, that's Doyle's patrons any given Thursday.

Not only does the run for mayor take a lot more planning, sewing up supporters — individual, corporate and organization, it means more cash on hand. Plus the requirements are more constricted. While candidates can file papers as late as May 12th, they need 3,000 sigs.

So, there's months of relative political excitement, including:

May 19th — state primary for 3rd Suffolk

June 16th — state election for 3rd Suffolk

September 22nd — Boston primary, including mayor

November 3rd — Boston elections

The sprint is in the crowded field for Sal DiMasi's seat. Six are already announced, as in:

Reason says that Michlewitz as DiMasi's highly visible and well appreciated constituent services aide has a great headstart. Yet, my own look at the candidates suggests that Passoni has her head and heart in the right place on issues.

I'll give them another week or so to flesh out or build websites. In addition to experience and positions, the candidates reveal much about their abilities in their online fronts.

As an aside, those with Facebook pages should stop that stuff. Michlewitz and Ross' pages show how lame and misdirected those can be. While mayoral candidates are probably doing themselves favors, their pages don't look like frat boys' long-weekend fun spots. Yoon, Flaherty and McCrea use theirs to poll voters on issues and concerns, as well as keep a steady update on their campaign appearances.

The dash to the special election and its primary should be fascinating. The relative parvenu candidates have little time in public or online to differentiate themselves and justify votes.

Michlewitz has been in the game as a high-level lackey for some time. Passoni ran an impressive race for Boston City Council that overlaps part of the House district. The election may well come down to them unless the other four show some brilliance soon.

For mayor though, the race promises to be high-concept Boston. Mayor Tom Menino has not announced, but apparently has all the machine and cash in place. He should not run, rather retire as longest service mayor ever, puff up his chest and smirk or gently criticize his successor. I fear he'll go in and either lose narrowly or leave voters thinking, "Oh, crap, another four years of the same."

My shallowness includes that I have to admit after 16 years of Da Mare's mug, some of the nice looking young things are an upgrade...at least in appearance